


Ribbon Tangerine Roses

by AngelinaVansen (catherineflowers)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Living Witness, Alternate Universe Resolutions, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Masochism, Sadism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 01:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14801747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/AngelinaVansen
Summary: Set in the Living Witness universe, Kathryn and Chakotay have a dark secret they can never share.





	Ribbon Tangerine Roses

**Author's Note:**

> Written in the early 2000s for the QoS Truly Twisted competition.
> 
> Be warned that this is indeed a very dark and twisted story.

Kathryn and I have a secret. A secret so dark that if the crew knew, there'd be a mutiny. Quite possibly we'd be executed. There are few things that turn the stomachs of an edgy crew like the perversions of their leaders.

In the darkness of the Captain's chambers, she and I act out things few humans have ever done. 

Depraved things, things a man and a woman should never admit to wanting from one another. Sometimes I think we must have gone insane.

I didn't imagine it being like this. Our relationship started out so conventionally. Originally, I fell in love with Kathryn because she was good at torture. 

I was a lucky man. Back in the Alpha Quadrant, a woman with such skills would be highly sought after, quite a prize. I could barely believe my eyes the fist time I saw her in action. 

She was mesmerising, a tiny figure of focused sadism. What she wanted would not be denied her, be it obedience, loyalty, or just information.

She didn't even blanch as her personal guards tore that Ocampan girl limb from limb.

I must admit her pitiful squealing and the sight of her battered body had begun to make even me nauseous. But Kathryn carried on tormenting her in that soft, husky voice of hers, calm and measured. She ran a gloved hand all over the girl's abused flesh as she promised that the pain would stop, that she could be free, if only she would give us the information that we needed.

Most humans have no stomach for prolonged torture sessions like that. It gets to us on some level, bothers us. Sooner or later we start to hear the screams of loved ones, our own screams.

But Kathryn was different. She had a gift, a total detachment from the pain of others. 

She could stand there, ordering torment after torment, execution after execution, her face blank and calm and pale. Like she was ordering food from a replicator. No wonder she had made Captain so quickly. True psychopaths go far in Starfleet.

She was attracted to me too, I could tell straight away. She had read my personnel file, so she knew what I was capable of. In the years since I had resigned my commission from Starfleet, I had gone from the discreet assassination of Cardassian soldiers in the Demilitarised Zone to all out terrorism and the genocide of entire colonies.

I think it had aroused her.

Not uncommon. Where we come from, ferocity's an attractive quality in a potential mate. When she beamed me onto her bridge that first day, I was fired up enough to kill her entire crew. I think that's why she wanted to join forces with me. She knew. She knew what we could be together.

I knew it too. After several weeks, I began to fantasise about joining with her, truly. Being by her side, no matter what.

It was pretty normal stuff. I dreamed about her naked, bound. Spitting at me, fighting me. Screaming how she hated me as I bruised that pale face with bites. Humiliating her, but having her humiliate me, too. Applying some of that beautiful detachment as she brutalised me with whips and paddles. Doubtless a woman like that would have an impressive collection of instruments.

I dreamed about what it would be like to be on that table, in her chambers. To be beaten by her thugs for her amusement. I dreamed about her soft voice, asking me for information that I couldn't give. About her promising that everything would be all right, that she was a woman of peace, that all she wanted was to get home. I dreamed about her face being the last thing I ever saw.

Like I said, it was pretty conventional stuff.

It was all mutual. She started summoning me to her quarters, late at night. Waking me, often from dreams about her.

She would be out of uniform, dressed in black. Always in black, with her lips that deep red. I was drawn to her shockingly white skin even then; it seemed so vulnerable. Ready to be marked.

But also like a mask. Her strange little face, you never knew what she was thinking. I wondered if she was amused by me. Toying with me.

She certainly seemed to be tormenting me. Seeing how far she could push me before I let loose the animal she expected. Everyone probably thought we were fucking. Everyone probably thought that I'd fucked for my life.

I held off a long while, mostly because I was unsure of her. She was friendly and flirtatious enough, but I had seen that behaviour before. It was often a prelude to a horrible death. I wanted to be sure of what she wanted.

Then we were stranded, and everything changed. We caught a virus from somewhere, possibly deliberately. I think Tuvok wanted to try his hand at command for a while.

Conveniently, the only way we wouldn't die is if we stayed together on a certain planet for the rest of our lives. I could see the smirk on Tuvok's face as the Doctor gave us the news.

I wondered why he hadn't just staged a coup and had us executed.

You can imagine Kathryn's reaction. She swore she'd kill them, every one. She swore she'd find a cure, build a shuttle and hunt Voyager down. The Doctor had to hog-tie her to beam her down.

As for me, well, I was curious. Curious about Kathryn mostly. How would our relationship change when she wasn't flanked by personal guards? We barely had shelter, so sending me to a torture chamber wasn't an option if I displeased her.

I decided to take advantage of the situation.

I raped her pretty much the second that Voyager broke orbit. She fought me well, but it had been two years coming, and I wasn't going to be denied. Two years of frustration, two years of teasing, two years of fantasising about putting bruises all over that obscenely pale skin exploded in two minutes. I ripped her uniform apart at the crotch and fucked her over the single supply crate they had left us. 

She howled and screamed and swore, but she was lucky I didn't hurt her worse. It felt so good I wanted to fuck her to death. 

Over the next two days, I think I almost did. Building our shelter took a back seat as I lashed her to a tree and had my way with her over and over again, any way I fancied. I made some pretty vicious canes from the thin, thorny branches of a nearby bush and beat her until my arm was sore. She fought me and cursed me, but she found it arousing.

Looking back, it's hard to believe we were once such conventional lovers.

When finally I'd built us somewhere to live, I released her and let her treat her injuries and get her revenge.

I'd wake up at night, tied to my bed, and then I was hers. She'd suffocate me between her thighs, not letting me breathe until I'd lapped sufficiently at her dripping sex. Then she would hurt me in earnest.

Knives, flames, her tongue, her nails. Her bare hands. All of these were her weapons of sex. She used instruments from her toolkits as huge, agonising dildos which I tried to bear without the cries I so desperately needed.

She was so good. The best sex I had ever had. By night I was hers, and by day, she was mine. We got through all our medical supplies in under a month.

In the end, we had to stitch up our wounds, and that became part of the game too. Unnecessary surgery. Boredom and isolation are wonderful things. I think our parents would have been proud.

Then something happened. I made Kathryn pregnant and we had to perform an abortion.

We had almost nothing left from Voyager by this time. We had only some home-made alcohol to help her dull the pain and it took us hours.

I remember wishing I'd forced her to go through with the pregnancy and just killed the child at birth. It would have been less difficult. Thankfully she passed out eventually.

It was while she was recovering that things changed between us. She was weak and needed constant care. Weeks I stayed with her, sleeping in the same bed, checking her temperature, bathing her and easing her through her bouts of fever and delirium. 

I became intimate with every inch of her soft white form, in a way that I had never been with anyone. No one had ever needed me the way that Kathryn did in the weeks that followed her abortion.

It was different. I found myself enjoying it. Getting a bowl of lukewarm water and a cloth. Parting her clothes and washing her down, droplets beading on the pale slope of her bosom. Drying her with a cloth I'd warmed by the fire. Watching her skin break into goosebumps.

Afterwards I'd go out into the forest and tremble, thinking about her. Wondering what was wrong with me. 

I was shaking with the need to violate her. I needed to chew her nipples, slap her unresponsive skin, leave my bruises and my handprints on her. All perfectly normal. All what I should have been doing.

But I wasn't. I wasn't. I couldn't. I couldn't touch her. I didn't want to desecrate her. It seemed disrespectful.

I decided I must be going mad. Spending too much time with her. I decided after her recovery, I would leave to spend some time alone.

Oh, but I couldn't. As the weeks passed, she got stronger and spent more time conscious. She would watch me with delicious half-lidded blue eyes as I soaped the soft skin I loved, and she knew. She knew what I was thinking.

She would arch up into my hands, and I would watch her pink nipples get erect as my breath blew across them. She watched me almost in wonderment, and I saw her eyes get dark when I touched her. Passionate.

She liked it. A gentle touch. 

Unspoken, but her breath changed when I went to give her a bed-bath. Deeper, hitching as I ran the cloth over skin that hadn't had a chance to get dirty since her last wash.

She would almost moan as I sponged her inner thighs, paying special attention to them. I wondered what it would be like to lie between them, not banging, not slamming, but cradled by them. Being held. 

Gazing into her eyes as I moved inside her. Holding her hands.

These were dangerous thoughts, even on a planet where there were only two of us. People had been hospitalised for less. This was not how it was done, especially not with a woman like Kathryn Janeway.

I had to keep reminding myself of that. She was Captain Kathryn Janeway. I had to keep reminding myself what an amazing specimen of womanhood she was. Cruel, black hearted. 

She wasn't some useless slave girl I could murder after I revealed my weakness.

So why was she responding? Why was she letting her fingers wander too, not to wound or claw me, but to stroke me? Touching me lightly with fingertips that were electricity?

Why did her eyes lock with mine, almost begging me? Naked. Mouth open. Inviting a kiss that wouldn't bite or bruise but suck and play and love.

I thought I must be going mad.

I tried to stay away. Insisted she was well enough to bathe herself. I even made a half-hearted attempt to hurt her. Decided she was well enough to stand a rape.

I waited till she was deep asleep, curled in sheets, one hand beside her face. Her hair, which she'd been growing on this planet, was spread across the pillows.

I grabbed a handful. Ripped it viciously from her head. She woke with a cry. Surprise and pain. I slapped her face and spun her over, pulling at my pants to pull my cock out.

She gave a strangled cry of displeasure, but it wasn't right. I saw my handprints on her skin, the skin that I had cared for all these weeks, and it looked wrong. She didn't deserve to be hurt, I didn't want to hurt her.

All I wanted to do was caress her, fall into her arms, tell her how much I adored her and belonged to her.

I fought it. Pulled her onto her back with one of her delicate arms and sank my teeth into her breast. She cried out and I tasted her blood, usually so exciting. 

But it didn't excite me. Her blood was flat, and looking at her damaged nipple, I felt sick. Sorry. I couldn't do it. I didn't even have an erection.

She was looking at me. Her eyes were wet and full of pain. Usually she wore a mask of pleasure and defiance when we fucked. I looked back at her and I was lost.

"Oh Kathryn ..." I mumbled, and fell into her arms.

She grabbed me as I fell on her, throwing myself on her like she was an altar of sacrifice. Half of me was waiting for the stab through my heart. 

"Ohhh," she breathed in response. It was the gentlest sound I had ever heard from a woman in my life, and my heart just broke.

She took me, held me, sinuously, winding arms and legs around me in the softest embrace I could have ever imagined. Her mouth was warm and soft like a summer fruit and her tongue was slack and slick, not the usual stabbing weapon.

My hands moved, trembling, almost of their own will. Not grabbing. Not taking, not marking. Just ... touching. Stroking her, feeling the texture of her body, every little hair and mole and scar.

She arched underneath my touch, humming and sighing and exquisite.

Her own hands started to flutter across my chest, tentative at first, then more exploratory. Learning me. Down my stomach, her touch was agony. I wanted to twist away and into it at the same time.

She started to nibble me, tongue me, tasting the places she had previously felt. All the time, she made noises like she did when she drank her coffee. Like the taste of me, the very taste of my skin, gave her pleasure.

This was not sex. We were both too naked. We kissed again, leaving our eyes open and locked. Our mouths met, parted, met again. I dipped my tongue to taste hers. I threaded my fingers into her hair and stroked her cheek with my thumb, feeling the lump where I had broken her cheekbone a few months ago. At that moment, it seemed unthinkable.

Her hands splayed on the small of my back, pressing me close to the point where her legs spread. The ache to join with her was almost unbearable. I had never felt anything like it.

Sure, I'd wanted women in the past, had urges to take them, but it was nothing in comparison to the slow, aching build-up that I felt for Kathryn right then. I just wanted to fit us together, be held inside her. 

The feeling of conquering and dominance that should have been there was totally absent. I was giving.

She trembled as I slid into her, urging me on with sighs and little undulations of her hips. She had her legs crooked around my pelvis, loosely, hands placed on my shoulders.

She drew me into her, slowly, inch by glorious inch. I felt her, was welcomed by her, held by her. I murmured words of love into her hair and held her hands.

She looked up at me as though I had just shown her the secrets of the Holy Grail. Complete awe. Wonder.

"I love you," she whispered. "Chakotay."

It was too much. Tears welled up in my eyes, poured down my face. I wanted to hold her close and never let her go. It seemed to me that at that moment, nothing else in the universe existed. I had never felt that before. I doubted any human had.

Slowly, she guided my hands, as if for the first time. She made me touch her in a way I had never done. We were both operating on instinct alone. She moved against me in a counter-rhythm, her cries building. 

She came, not in the screaming explosion she usually did, but in a long, keening wail as she held me tight within her. I felt it all, the grip and relax of her muscles, the tightness of her thighs. And, mere seconds later, I felt it again. She held my gaze with her own, and I had never seen such sheer, naked pleasure. She was giving it to me, sharing it with me.

I gave it right back. It spilled out of me in a torrent of promises and declarations. I would stay by her side. No matter what. I would do whatever I could to make her burden lighter.

I came, weak as a kitten. Trembling. For a few seconds afterwards, I thought I would die. I thought I had ejaculated my very soul into Kathryn's body.

Then she shifted stickily under me and wrapped me back in her secure embrace. Kissing the sweat from my temple.

I pulled out of her body because I was heavy, and hugged her. Cuddled her. Brought her on top of me so she could lie on my chest. There, we fell asleep, feeling things we'd never felt before.

It continued like that for the next year, the whole time we were stranded on the planet. 

There, it didn't matter. We could be as loving as we liked. We spent days curled up in bed together, tickling, playing, naked as the day we were born. Feeding each other like infants with fruits from the bushes, trailing their sweet juices all over each other's skins and then licking the trails with eager tongues.

Always we spoke about how much we were in love. Neither of us thought that Voyager would come back.

Until they did. Tuvok couldn't keep command any more than he could hold a smile. In the end, the crew had mutinied and made him come back for us, "miraculously" with a cure.

I wondered what would be different when we were back on the ship. I had seen nothing of the old Kathryn for months. She was a carefree, wild spirited, affectionate woman now. I wondered if she would be able to keep command.

I needn't have worried.

That last day, I came out of the shelter, wearing the uniform that barely fit any more, heart in agony. I expected to see Kathryn feeling the same, looking odd and out of place in the clothes that had once been more familiar than her own skin.

Instead I saw Captain Janeway, eyes like ice in front of me. Hair cut short again, already in the gloves. Ready to go back to her ship, to her life.

I felt my heart sink like a stone in my chest. 

The first item of business when we were back on the ship was to deal with the traitors. I followed her numbly through the corridors of Voyager, through chamber after chamber, listening to the click of her heels on the deck-plates, right behind her. Right behind her. Following.

No matter what.

I don't know what I was expecting from her. Softness, maybe. Something different. I looked at her skin and tried to remember what it had looked like down on the planet, under my hands.

White, I remembered. Very white. Very warm.

She took off her gloves to place her hands on Tuvok's naked chest. He was tied to the table in her torture chamber, her personal torture chamber. Breathing harder than normal but with a calm face.

I don't know what I was expecting from her. For her to play this differently. 

But she didn't. She got her tray of devices out, and punished Tuvok for every day we had been stranded on the planet. Tormenting him until his screams filled the room, filled my ears, made me nauseous.

The whole time, she was exactly the same. Mouth set and eyes distant. Voice soft and devoid of emotion. It was like nothing had changed. Could she really be two such different people? Again I marvelled at her degree of mental separation. She really was an incredible woman. In any other circumstances, I would have been proud to be her lover. I should have been.

When she tired of Tuvok, she ordered him confined to the brig. He seemed grateful she hadn't decided to execute him, but I wasn't sure I would have been. Doubtless there would be many more punishment sessions before she let him go back on duty.

Kathryn was a strange woman sometimes. I'd have killed him for what he did to us.

Still, she was the Captain.

I stayed by her side for the rest of the day, a little dumbstruck. Trying to catch her eye, wanting to see something, anything, of the woman I had spent the past year with.

It was like she wasn't there.

I returned to my chambers after my shift was over, very confused. Not knowing how I should behave with her. Not knowing how I should behave at all. 

Part of me was even worried for my life. The secret I held would end her Starfleet career. She would never be able to return to Earth if the Admiralty knew.

I went into my bedroom, and Kathryn was already in my bed. My heart leapt, somersaulted. Soared. She was naked, skin as white and warm as it had been the first night I had held her. Eyes on mine, hair long, rich and red, falling to her waist. Thanks to the follicle stimulator I saw in her hand.

"Kathryn," I said. Just wanting to say her name.

"Sssshhh," she said softly. Reached across to light some tapers. "Don't speak."

I had to. "We can't do this on Voyager," I told her.

Her eyes met mine, bright blue. Steel blue. The eyes I'd dreamed of seeing as my last sight. "We just can't speak about this on Voyager," she said.

It was enough. It was all I wanted to hear. Slowly I shed my uniform and went to her. Caressed her and cuddled her. Rubbed her, aroused her. Made her wet and warm, entered her with all of me. With everything I had.

Moved inside her, lapping at her skin with my tongue, her familiar taste. Behind her ear, mixed with something else. A splash of dried green Vulcan blood from earlier.

I cleaned it from her perfect skin, and carried on.

It was different on Voyager. We had to be quiet. I was certain that anyone who heard us would know that this was no ordinary sex act.

But it was no less amazing. If anything, it was better, having seen Kathryn in action in her torture chamber earlier, I appreciated the soft and loving woman that she was with me in private. 

No one knew this Kathryn. No one ever would.

I started to look forward to our encounters. Plan for them. I would fill my bathtub with sweet-smelling petals for her, massage the stresses of command from her shoulders as she relaxed. When she came to me, she used the follicle stimulator every time, gave herself long rich tresses to her waist.

Then, just before she left, she'd crop it all again and leave the cuttings on the pillow for me to wake to. I kept them in a box.

During shore leave, we'd go somewhere remote and hold each other, to remind us of the planet. It seemed like something special, to hold her in a place where everything smelled of something natural. Idyllic, almost. We both felt full of life.

Ironic then, that it was on one of these getaways that I managed to fill Kathryn full of life for the second time.

She came to me one night, troubled. I wondered briefly if it was connected to what she had been doing: assisting Seven with the assimilation of Harren, Celes and Telfer. But I knew Kathryn. Things like that never got to her. 

I knew it was something far more serious.

"I need you to hurt me," she said in a soft voice, just as we were finishing dinner.

I almost choked on my Blood Wine. "What?!" I gasped. Even the thought of it made me ill.

"Mark me," she said. "You have to."

"Why?" I asked. 

She was barely looking at me. "Because I need to see the doctor, and I don't want him to know."

"What difference does it make? He doesn't know we're fucking any more."

I didn't understand just then. We'd both had physicals and it had never been an issue.

"He will," she said, her eyes meeting mine. "I have to ask him to give me an abortion."

"Oh," I said, and it sounded almost like a gasp. The air stuck in my throat. "Again?"

She nodded. "Again."

I wasn't really surprised. We tended to throw caution to the wind in the heat of passion. 

"He needs to think we've been ... pretty active," she said carefully.

I knew what she meant. She wanted me to hurt her bad. Something that would impress the Doctor. The kind of injuries he would expect from his psychopathic Captain and her sociopathic First Officer.

I swallowed. "All right," I said eventually.

"Thank you," she said.

Slowly she got to her feet and started undressing herself. She didn't reach for the follicle stimulator. I followed suit, my eyes never leaving that pale freckled skin.

"What would you like?" I asked her with a trembling voice.

She looked unsure. "Bites, maybe. Bruises ... punishment marks. I think you would have lashed me."

I thought back to the time when I had done just that, when she was tied to the tree on the planet. How long ago that seemed. How little it seemed like me or her.

She turned with her back to me, and bent slightly, hands braced on the table, presenting her rump. I looked about for something to lash her with. I didn't keep sex toys, I always preferred to improvise, but I hadn't needed to think like this for such a long time.

Finally my eye fell on a vase of decorative plants, made from metal. A tribute from a race we'd agreed not to eradicate in exchange for dilithium. I pulled one out. The stem was long and springy. It would leave a mark, a nice mark. Just the thing she wanted.

I laid it against the bare flesh of her buttock and felt her tense a little. How thrilling this would have been to me once. 

I slowly drew my arm back, trying to regulate my breathing, trying to calm myself, centre myself. Trying to find some enthusiasm. 

"Do it," she said between clenched teeth.

I did it. 

I brought my arm and the flower stem down with a snap. The crack as it bit into her flesh was impressive: it sounded like an ancient pistol.

Kathryn couldn't help herself: she cried out. Had anyone else done this to her, I had no doubt she wouldn't have made a sound. I had seen her withstand the full horrors of Kazon interrogation at Seska's hands without so much as a flinch. But this was something else. It was me.

It was me, it was her. It was me, hurting the woman I loved.

I dropped the flower and grabbed her, pulling her into a wrenching embrace. I was crying, she was crying.

"I can't do this ... God Kathryn I can't, I'm sorry, I can't ...." I moaned into her neck over and over again, hands all over that beautiful skin, stroking, playing, feeling.

I picked her up in my arms and carried her into my bed where I had already prepared a nest of pillows. I fell into it with her, shoving one of them under her hips and sliding inside her in one smooth stroke.

Afterwards, we lay in the warm darkness, playing each other's skin like instruments. Her eyes were full of tears.

I knew what was the matter with her. It was the same as what was the matter with me. I found my dermal regenerator and silently healed the bright-red mark that stained her perfect bottom. Then I used the follicle stimulator to grow her hair right out, the way she was when she was mine.

"Have the baby," I said to her.

She looked up at me from over her shoulder, lifting her head from the pillow.

"Have it," I repeated. "Let's have a child."

She laughed, totally without humour. "The crew would mutiny," she said.

"Fuck the crew," I told her. 

She shook her head. "We'd be swinging from the yardarm before a week was out."

She wasn't wrong. Such things had happened before, on far less volatile ships than ours.

I was quiet, running my fingers through her hair.

Suddenly she caught my hand and threaded her fingers through my own, holding my palm to hers. "You know I would," she whispered.

My breath caught. "Really?" I asked her.

"Yes," she said in that same, soft voice. Her eyes, exciting as a thunderstorm, were on mine, thrilling me. Making my pulse race.

"Kathryn ..."

"Ssshhh," she said, and kissed me. "We'll think of something."

And now we have. 

We're taking shore leave tomorrow, in a system that has just passed through a nebula. There is much radiation about, a lot of chance we'll get away. That we'll never be detected.

What we want is a planet like the one where this began. One we can be alone on, have our baby. We've been scanning for a while.

We don't think Tuvok will be too keen to be in charge again, but we don't care. We don't care about any of this. 

Tomorrow, when she takes my hand, we're leaving all of this behind forever.


End file.
